Marketing 101…in Second Grade!!
by Nadia Russell and company
WANTED: Experienced, business-savvy entrepreneurs with an eye for product development and marketing for exceptional opportunity to raise our company to the next level. Requires completion of first grade, familiarity with apples, and a team-focused strategy. Ability to raise more than $400 in two hours is highly desired.
If your child was a second grader at The Meadowbrook School any time in the recent 25+ years, he/she is qualified for this exciting job opportunity. Last week, seventeen 7 and 8 year olds put their minds together to create a new business called the Apple Festival. They did an apple tasting a couple weeks ago and then they did apple pie graphs to graph the results of their apple tasting. In their apple tasting, they found that Honeycrisp was the top scoring apple, with 8 votes. Fuji got 5, Granny Smith got 5, Red Delicious got 2, Golden Delicious got 0, and Gala got 0. Then the group did some research by visiting Styer Orchard, where they learned how apples get picked and that there are many different bins you can use to collect them. They used their marketing research to pick their own apples, choosing the most popular varieties to take home for product development. In a high power business meeting, the students brainstormed product ideas, deciding that past Festivals showed preference for apple cupcakes, candy and caramel apples, and apple cider. Each student worked with an adult to develop an apple product which they planned to sell at the Apple Festival on November 4, 2016. They learned to count money and make change for customers, priced their own products, and enlisted Moms, Dads, Grandmoms, and teachers as sales assistants for their product fair.
Here’s where the marketing came into play. They advertised the Festival by making posters in Computer class and posting them everywhere in the school, making T-shirts and a Festival tablecloth in Art class and performing in Assembly to get students excited about the big event. They learned apple songs in music and even performed an apple song in Spanish and an apple poem in French. It was a highly successful marketing campaign, and even more importantly, it was very fun!
The big day arrived! Products and baskets for money collection were set out on tables, vendors wore their Apple Festival T-shirts and excitedly waited for their first customers. The fourth grade arrived, money in hands to have the opportunity to select apple products and interact with the vendors and their sales associates. In just two hours, the ambitious entrepreneurs processed 104 customers, sending them on their school day full of apple happiness. Customers reported that they “loved all the hard work the second graders put into the Apple Festival”, and nominated apple muffins and mini candy apples as great products. The group raised more than $400 from their efforts, a huge success for their very first start-up company.
The Apple Festival is a striking example of the Meadowbrook focus on problem-based learning that teaches educational basics in math, writing, art, language, science, and technology while providing students with real world experience they will use throughout their lives. Particularly impressive is the cross-curricular collaboration among the Meadowbrook teachers, a commitment and emphasis that provides an integrated learning experience that the students remember forever.
If you’re looking for enthusiastic, hardworking, “commericialling”, creative, fun marketers and business leaders, you only have to make sure your new employees attended the Meadowbrook School!
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